Blind Flight: Two White Burgundies, One Fault Line
During a deductive tasting session you are poured two white wines blind, both served at 12 C from bottles opened 20 minutes earlier. Wine A is medium-deep gold with an amber edge; the nose shows baked apple, honey, candied ginger, cereal and a faint Sherry-like note, with no fresh citrus or stone fruit. On the palate it is dry, medium acid, medium alcohol, with a hollow mid-palate and a short, slightly bitter finish. You learn afterwards that it is a 2014 Meursault. Wine B is pale lemon-green with a pronounced struck-match, flinty, smoky reduction, behind which sit green apple, lemon and white flowers; it is lean, high in acid, long and taut. It is a 2019 Chablis 1er Cru. A guest at the table calls Wine A the more complex, mature wine and Wine B faulty. The examiner asks you to justify your assessment of both wines and to decide what you would pour as a replacement.
1. Using only the evidence in the setup, differentiate what is wrong with Wine A and Wine B, and describe the checks you would run before committing to either call.
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Wine A - oxidation, most likely premature oxidation (premox). The colour is advanced for a 2014 white Burgundy: gold with an amber edge at ten years is possible, but the aromatic set (baked apple, honey, candied ginger, cereal, faint Sherry) with no fresh citrus or stone fruit, plus a hollow mid-palate and a short bitter finish, describes fruit consumed by oxygen rather than fruit that has matured. A mature Meursault should still hold an acid line, some length and a core of stone fruit; a hollow middle and a clipped, bitter finish is the discriminator.
Wine B - reduction. Struck match, flint and smoke with clean green apple, lemon and white flowers behind it is the classic reductive signature of low-oxygen handling (lees contact, inert gas, tight closure). It reads as a fault to guests because it is sulfidic, not because the wine is damaged.
Checks before committing:
- Swirl or decant both for 10-15 minutes. Reduction should blow off and reveal fruit; oxidation will not recover and typically darkens further in the glass.
- Inspect ullage and cork on A; a pushed or soaked cork supports heat damage or oxygen ingress.
- Open a second bottle of A from the same case. Premox is often random bottle to bottle; a single closure failure changes the story from premox to a one-off cork fault.
- Smell for TCA (wet cardboard, stripped fruit - absent here) and for botrytis (marmalade, ginger, glycerol), which would retain acidity and length rather than lose them.
- Confirm temperature: both were served at 12 C, so temperature does not explain the difference.
2. The guest calls Wine B faulty and Wine A the more complex, mature wine. What do you say at the table, what do you pour as a replacement, and what do you deliberately avoid doing?
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Do not argue the tasting note. The guest is describing preference, not analysis: they like the honeyed, soft character of A and dislike the struck match in B. Separate the two issues out loud: 'Wine A is showing oxidation - the fruit has gone and the finish is short, so it is not a style I would recommend. Wine B is reductive, not faulty; that flinty note usually lifts with air.' Then let them decide.
On B: offer to decant it or revisit it in five minutes, and pour a small taste from a freshly opened bottle to show the difference. If the reduction persists and turns to cabbage or drains, that is a more serious sulfur problem and the bottle should be replaced.
On A: never present it as a replacement, and do not let the guest keep drinking it as the benchmark for mature Burgundy - it will mislead their expectations and they will judge the next Meursault against a flawed bottle. Apologise once, briefly, and take the cost on the house rather than debating.
Replacement: choose for weight and texture, not for the same fault. A village Meursault or a Chablis 1er Cru from a different case gives the same broad shape - dry, medium-bodied, chalky - without the oxidative note. Ask whether the guest wants the same grape, the same weight, or something different, and confirm the price band before opening anything. Do not open a third bottle without checking price and preference; that is how a table ends up with a costly wine it did not order.
3. In a blind deductive tasting, which structural markers would you record for these two wines, and which ones would have stopped you calling Wine A simply 'a mature Meursault'?
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Record in a fixed order: appearance (intensity, hue, rim variation, tears), nose (condition first, then intensity, development, aroma families), palate (sweetness, acid, alcohol, body, tannin, flavour intensity, finish length, complexity), then conclusions. For these two the decisive fields are acid, body, length and the condition check.
Wine A: medium acid is the giveaway. Meursault at ten years should still show medium-plus to high acid with a chalky grip; medium acid plus a hollow middle plus a short, bitter finish points to oxidation, not maturity. If I had recorded condition as 'clean' purely because there was no TCA, I would have missed the oxidation entirely. Development must be recorded separately from condition: a wine can be clean and still oxidised.
Wine B: high acid, lean body, long finish, clean fruit behind the reduction. The reductive note belongs in the condition note as a sulfur-based aroma, then gets re-checked after a swirl. Lean and high acid with length is Chablis typicity - it does not need to be 'fixed' to be correct.
Rules I would apply on the page: never call a fault and a deduction in the same breath without a second look; always timestamp a reductive note and re-smell after air; and separate 'mature' from 'oxidised' by fruit, acid and finish rather than by colour alone.